The Deplosion Saga

by Paul Anlee

  There were few sizeable buildings in the cityscapes they observed, Raytansoh noticed.

  How strange. I thought humans were social animals who liked to convene in aggregate communities.

  Even in the watery depths of the colonized planets in his own empire, his people came together in dense, artificial reef cities. Some of the reefs extended kilometers above the deepest habitable ocean floors.

  It seemed odd that on Eso-La tall structures were rare aside from two or three small cities.

  The drones drifted stealthily in search of Alumitas that might house a hub of Alum’s processing units. They detected great concentrations of calculating machinery built into widespread chunks of the ringworld floor but not a single Alumita of the kind that was so common on other worlds in Alum’s Realm. Had they taken some alternate form that he was overlooking?

  He didn’t think so.

  Slightly smaller versions of Cybrids accompanied almost every human on Eso-La, and there was no evidence of the continuous worshipping and reverence so common on Alum’s other worlds.

  What manner of world is this?—he wondered. An aberration, an experiment, or something else? Perhaps a home to rebels? Could it exist outside of Alum’s Realm? Outside of His knowledge?

  Whatever this world is, it’s almost certainly valuable to Alum. But how? As a hostage or as a gift?

  Raytansoh shifted another million drones to Eso-La and sent them exploring every nook and cranny of the fascinating ringworld.

  * * *

  A single drone followed the path of a meandering river, buffeted by gentle winds. Seeing no reason to alter course by shifting, it permitted the breeze to carry it across an open field of short-cropped vegetation. The river twisted away, and the drone found itself over a series of polished, blue stone triangles scattered around the field.

  Observing from millions of light years away, Raytansoh discerned no practical purpose for the arrangement. He shifted the drone a little higher, looking for a pattern in the shapes.

  From ten meters above the ground, the inward spiraling of the triangle shapes toward a central obelisk became obvious.

  Ritualistic or functional?—Raytansoh wondered.

  The drone detected no active electromagnetic radiation coming from any of the inlaid forms. They were spaced like steps, sufficiently close that humans could walk along any one of nine paths, from the outer edge of the field into the center without setting foot on the bare grass.

  Ritual, then.

  At the moment, the clearing appeared to be empty but Raytansoh decided caution was probably warranted. He allowed the drone to fall gently toward the ground in the weakening wind.

  When it’s about to touch the grass, I’ll shift it higher and let it catch the breeze again—he thought.

  Before the drone had descended half the distance, a gust caught it and lifted it high above the field. From this new aerial perspective, Raytansoh noticed movement several hundred meters from the obelisk, where each of the nine stone pathways met the surrounding trees.

  Several animals (or were they machines?) stepped out from the trees; the drone was too far away to make a clear identification.

  Dark-shelled, smooth-moving—Raytansoh observed. Not human.

  He scanned the EM spectrum again.

  No broadband emission. Possibly trained animals or machines coordinated by line-of-sight laser transmission.

  He watched the entities move away from the tree line and toward the center of the patterned tiles. Each step carried them from one triangular stone across the grass to the next.

  Bob, shuffle, shuffle, step.

  Their forward motion appeared to be coordinated, drawing them closer to the obelisk at a slow but steady pace.

  As they neared the biodrone, their unusual structure came into focus. Three appendages supported a dark greenish-blue orb from which another three manipulators sprouted. There were no obvious visual receptors, no obvious sensory organs of any kind.

  Machines—Raytansoh concluded. No doubt programmed to follow a specific route.

  He’d observed no similar rituals on any of the other worlds in the Realm. Was this an exclusive local adaptation?

  Since they had no EM emissions, Raytansoh logged them as an interesting oddity and not likely to pose a considerable threat.

  He allowed himself to be lulled and mesmerized by their graceful movements, their repetitive shuffle across the polished stones, and their delicate steps between tiles. Their upper manipulators weaved intricate patterns in the air as they made their way toward the center of the field.

  His curiosity grew. What kind of ritual could machines perform that would have any relevance to humans who weren’t there to watch? Perhaps the obelisk was some strange device that would be activated once the nine reached it.

  They were close, now.

  Raytansoh shifted the biodrone to a location near the top of the strange structure and a little to one side.

  In case it projects a beam upward—he thought.

  The drone moved a little roughly in the swirling turbulence around the obelisk, and Raytansoh’s visual processors had trouble steadying the view. He repositioned the drone, hoping to stabilize the images.

  The nearest of the ritual-performing machines halted. Its upper manipulators whipped wildly in agitation. The other machines stopped mid-step.

  Have I been noticed?

  With a flash of light, the drone’s visual feed cut out. The last image it sent was of all nine machines triangulating its position with two of their sensor-tipped appendages, while powerful UV lasers blasted it from a third.

  The feeds from every one of his other drones on this strange ringworld went black shortly after. Before he could analyze the images and inventory the rest of the drones scattered across Alum’s Realm, he received an emergency request from Depchaun.

  “Convene in the Hall of Thrones. Now.”

  23

  Depchaun focused his attention on two ringworlds: the one to which Darak had returned after his meeting with the Six and a separate, rather intriguing double ringworld he’d been able to locate thanks to the entangled particles he’d found on the dead Angel in the triple-star system.

  Naturally, Depchaun had omitted sharing any of those entangled particles with the other Gods. One had to keep the most promising candidates for the location of Alum’s nexus to oneself. The other Gods, he reasoned, would have done the same. Indeed, they were likely hiding important leads of their own from him. He was sure of it.

  He dispatched an exploratory fleet of a million sub-millimeter sized electromechanical drones into position near the enormous double ringworld system. Each drone contained its own sensory apparatus and sufficient computational machinery for free shifts of about ten meters.

  Ringworlds—he scowled. Homes to soft biological organisms needing atmosphere, water, and warmth.

  The original life-supporting planet of his species was maintained as a special reserve, but nobody went back there anymore. Except for the occasional scientific expedition he sponsored, there was no interest. Space was vast. There was much to explore, and ample habitable volume for beings that were not bound by the demands of living organisms.

  By their weaknesses.

  His own people clustered together in energy-efficient complexes the size of small asteroids. Linked together like a strand of pearls on a necklace billions of kilometers long, the complexes orbited their respective suns at a uniform, optimal distance.

  Each complex housed up to ten thousand mature minds that spent their time in deep thought. The average mature mind controlled hundreds of robots that carried out physical work, maintained and expanded the asteroid homes, mined planets and planetoids for resources, conducted experiments, and flew in the dynamic, artistic formations that were so popular among Depchaun’s people.

  With so few physical needs beyond a steady supply of energy and the maintenance of worn-out computational components, Depchaun’s people—the real people, the mature minds—enjoyed t
ime to contemplate the mysteries of the universe, to dream, and to play.

  No need to be constantly producing food for the hungry masses.

  The inefficiency inherent in extraction of solar power into biological organisms, and the even poorer utilization of that energy all the way up the food chain to humans, was puzzling to him. It made no sense.

  They spent so much effort on producing energy in chemical form. What would all the trillions upon trillions of humans do with their time if it weren’t for their constant need to eat? Why didn’t they just upload their minds into semiconductor substrate and be done with it? Maybe that’s why there were so many of them in the universe. They viewed expansion as the best way to stave off starvation.

  He shifted a single drone to an entangled location on the surface of one of the double ringworlds. It arrived over a platform that matched Darak’s description of a starstep, immediately shifted itself a few meters away to a perch on a nearby building, and switched to passive monitoring mode. The other drones, millions of klicks away, listened in.

  Depchaun waited for hours to see if this single incursion into the ringworld had been detected. What if Alum had laid a trap for the millions of tiny spies, all of which could be traced back to Depchaun’s empire? A cautious approach was best here. A single drone, tentatively listening and watching for any sign of detection, was easier to cut off from the empire if that became necessary.

  Sitting on a window ledge near the starstep, the drone overheard a pair of newly-arrived travelers discussing their visit to the double ringworld system. They spoke in the same Standard language Darak had shared with the Gods as a common tongue to use in the Hall of the Thrones.

  Careless of him—Depchaun thought—to pick a language so easily identifiable with Alum’s Realm.

  “First time to Home World?” one traveler asked the other.

  “It is,” the second replied.

  “What brings you here? Business or blessings?”

  “Business, mostly. I have new music from the younger colonies in the Gargus system to share.”

  “Wonderful. Be sure to save some time to catch a service in the Grand Alumita,” the first recommended.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” the second replied.

  Why must animals always chatter on like that?—Depchaun wondered. Always communicating. Always seeking comforting contact with each other. Rarely sharing anything important.

  For once, their endless nattering proved useful. As Depchaun reviewed their conversation, he was grateful for the funny habit he’d heard humans call small talk.

  Ah! “Home World” is how they refer to the double ringworld. I knew those few particles would be linked to something important!

  Satisfied that his drone had raised no alarms, he shifted a sizeable team of machines toward the nearer edge of the two ringworlds, searching for the Grand Alumita the two travelers had mentioned.

  Alum was almost certain to have a major processing node there, perhaps, His primary one. If Alum could be hurt anywhere, a place such as that likely held a vulnerability.

  The drones moved silently throughout the city, listening in on conversations and reading public notices. Most non-spoken communications went through something the locals called the InterLat, some form of direct communications to their biological cognitive processors, he surmised.

  Depchaun tried to tune a drone to receive and decipher the signal. Surprisingly, the transmission proved too complex for a single drone’s processor. He networked in another. And another.

  Still nothing intelligible. He kept at it.

  I wouldn’t have thought these beings to be so sophisticated, except for their God.

  He networked the processing power of sixteen drones before pulling anything useful from the signal.

  Then, it dawned on him. The signals were digitally multiplexed. The local signal he’d assumed was no more than a single broadcast was comprised of unique connections to any of ten thousand individuals in the local area.

  More small talk—he surmised. Will it yield anything useful?

  Once he understood the system, he tweezed out one active address and decoded the channel. A few seconds after that, he acquired the initial handshake signature and could converse with the executive software.

  He waited patiently until darkness settled over this part of the ringworld and the humans became inactive. When all was quiet, he opened a channel to the public information system. Within minutes, made longer by the ponderous and clumsy interface, he obtained directions to his target.

  Early the next morning, Depchaun scattered a thousand drones to infiltrate every corner of the Grand Alumita.

  The largest single chamber was reserved as a meeting hall with assigned places for some ten thousand humans. At the moment, it was filled with people, males and females of the species, all dressed in loose fitting robes of the kind Brother Stralasi had worn to the Hall of Thrones.

  The humans were engaged in some sort of ritual. All eyes were focused on the raised stage at the front of the hall where a man stood dressed in a red robe. He carried a long wooden staff in one hand and held a silver chalice at waist height in the other.

  The man passed the wooden staff over the chalice and a globe of yellow and blue plasma about the size of his head flared into existence a hand’s breadth above the cup. The spinning ball of plasma spat flames like a sun’s corona.

  Depchaun’s tiny drones detected a distortion in the local physical laws that explained the effect. The small RAF field was cast by the cup.

  Trivial tricks to wow the ignorant human masses.

  Immediately after his own rise to godhood, Depchaun had performed many such spectacles to impress his people. Then he’d ascended to pure machine intelligence and, shortly thereafter, raised the minds of His people, though never quite as high as his.

  Their gratitude to him for the gift of immortality, as much as anything in this physical universe could be immortal, had bound them to him for eternity. Soon after, performing tricks became unnecessary.

  His own people knew such “miracles” were nothing more than advanced technology. They honored him as the sole possessor of such knowledge but worship was something, along with their puny biological brains, that they’d long since left behind. Deeper understanding had allowed respect to replace ignorant reverence.

  The monk with the flaming cup walked to the front of the stage. He set the staff in a stand and held the chalice aloft. The hall erupted into harmonious sounds.

  Singing!—Depchaun recalled the word Darak had used when describing his culture to the other Gods.

  Depchaun’s own people had never developed rhythmic and tonal alterations into an art form. Darak had once demonstrated the skill for them in the Hall of Thrones, but his half-hearted rendition had paled compared to the harmonics created by the thousands of voices raised together in this great chamber.

  Transfixing—Depchaun murmured. Powerful.

  When the song was over, the monk handed the goblet to an assistant who disappeared through the long, heavy curtains at the back of the stage. Depchaun sent a dozen drones to follow him. The assistant carried the cup, now minus its flame, down a long corridor to a smaller room housing a chest-high cabinet. He opened the rustic wooden door, lovingly placed the chalice on the deep shelf inside, and softly pressed the door closed.

  The man retreated a few steps and kneeled on a low, padded bench in front of the cabinet. His robes fell in soft folds as he bowed his head, clasped his hands together over his heart, and began a soft invocation.

  Depchaun directed five of the miniscule drones to enter through the crack between the cabinet doors. Two more positioned themselves closer to the monk and transmitted the man’s utterances.

  “Lord Alum, from whom all things arise and to whom all things shall return,” the monk began, quietly but fervently.

  “We beseech Thee to hold safe Your silver chalice until next we require it in joyous celebration of Your glory, when once again we shall raise our voices
in praise of Your miracles. Oh, Holy Alum, we pray that You restore its full power so it will continue to shine as a symbol of Your divine brilliance. May Your light outshine all for eternity. Amen.”

  The monk stood up and made a peculiar circling movement of his hands in front of his chest. He lowered his head again and took three long, slow breaths. In the brief pause after the breaths and before refilling his lungs, he opened the cabinet door to verify the cup inside was gone. Satisfied, he bowed, turned, and left the room.

  In the meantime, Depchaun had synchronized his receivers to the entangled particles in the two drones he’d sent into the cabinet with the chalice.

  Fascinating! The drones had been shifted, neither by him nor their own means, to a distant asteroid. He hurriedly shifted a few thousand drones to join them.

  The pursuing drones calculated the location to be further out from this system’s sun by several light-hours. On arrival, they hovered close to the chalice, which was sitting on a similar but different shelf in a darkened, vacuum-filled hollow. Bearings determined, the drones shifted outward in a dispersive pattern to explore their new location.

  The asteroid into which they’d been shifted appeared to be artificial. Its exterior was shiny metal. Its mass was carefully constructed: concentric layers of chambers and thick walls, joined by radiating struts and corridors. As they explored, they encountered a few of the Cybrids Darak had described.

  Simple maintenance robots, most likely, as they didn’t object to the arrival of my drones. Why has no alarm been raised?

  To all appearances, detailed calculations, and well-grounded speculation, this synthetic asteroid contained sufficient computational machinery to administer the two ringworlds of the system.

  If this was a sub-node of Alum’s distributed mind, it must be of lower security or function, perhaps dedicated to autonomic maintenance functions while His greater mind focused on constructing the Deplosion Array.

  If that’s the case, does all of Alum’s Realm lay this wide open? Could we simply take it and choke off the resources He needs to complete the array?